Monkey
by ink and ashes
Summary: John makes her do the stupidest of things sometimes. [fragmented story][one shots][JohnMarie]


Get the cool.  
Get the cool shoeshine.

**M O N K E Y**

There's a monkey in the jungle  
Watching a vapor trail  
Caught up in the conflict  
Between his brain and his tail

monkey.001//Mary and Marie

Even as she savored the fresh night air and the minty taste of menthol, she doubted her rational frame of mind. _What the hell am I doing up here?_ She took another drag, inhaling as she'd seen Logan do before. It wasn't hard after she coughed up a lung or two—it was easy to see why people found this so addicting. "Anyone asks, this was all your fault." She ashed and exhaled, enjoying the myriad of shapes the smoke's form took in the calm evening breeze.

"I don't see you complaining," he muttered with a devil-may-care grin . . . before adding "anymore," with a snark. "You really think the Professor's gonna buy whatever sob-story you give him?"

"Ah don't see why not. Ah'm innocent," she fluttered her lashes prettily at him, using the full-force of her accursed puppy face. "See? How can you deny a face like this?" This particular face had gotten her—and him, on occasion—out of trouble more than a few times when one of his harebrained schemes went straight to hell. She hadn't known its effect at first, but when he'd pointed out how well it worked she'd decided to perfect it—according to Mr. Pain-in-the-Ass, her _Southern Belle_ persona was their Get-Out-of-Jail ticket. "Besides, the one Ah'm worried about is Logan, not the Professuh."

He almost choked, forcing back the laugh before he sucked in a drag. "Are you serious? That hairy bastard can't stay mad at you for more than a few seconds." Once his air passage was clear, he really _did_ laugh. "You've got that guy wrapped around your pinky." _Just like . . ._ he didn't finish that thought.

"Shut up, John."

They sat in silence, each enjoying their well-earned—well-_stolen_—cigarettes. The music from his—also stolen—iPod stereo set was set on low—her preference, due to their precarious position—and the sweet rhythm made a beautiful duet with the midnight hour. Briefly, she wondered if it was okay to be enjoying herself thus; sitting on stolen lawn chairs with her boyfriend's best friend—and one of her _only_ friends—smoking stolen cigarettes found in Logan's knapsack, listening to random 'tunes from the eighty-gigabyte portable mp3 player pilfered from Bobby's dufflebag the day of the ice-wielder's departure for the Summer holidays. Logan would kill her, she knew—even though, technically, it was John that took the cigarettes; she'd been the one to inform him once she'd gotten over the surprise of discovering Logan's vices consisted of other things besides just beer and cigars.

John had also been the one to take Bobby's music player—and subsequent accessories—since John couldn't afford one of his own, and neither could she. She remembered John sneering over the "boy-next-door" and how lucky his friend was that his family bought him everything; she also remembered how there was a degree of sadness and envy in his words—she knew, because she felt it too.

She told John—after vainly trying to dissuade him of this stupid plan—it would have been easier if _she_ had just taken the necessary equipment for their newly-made "hideout", but he'd countered with a smirking "Yeah, but people expect _me_ to do stupid shit; if we got caught and they find out _you_ took the stuff, we'll never be able to pull off anything anymore—did you forget that you're the Trump Card here?" He flicked his lighter for a second, snapping the top closed in a move that revealed just how second-nature it'd become. "Besides, I know. . ." he didn't finish, but he didn't have to.

_He knows how horrible I'd feel about stealing from Logan, of all people, and Bobby._ She found it amazing how considerate he could be, even when he was breaking only _all_—almost, anyway—of the school rules. About an hour later—now—she had no regrets; it was nice, sitting on the rooftop with a friend.

"I knew a girl, once," he began out of nowhere, effectively breaking the companionable silence. She continued to stare out over the grounds with something akin to lazy contentment. "She was awesome. She never abandoned me, and even though I wasn't supposed to have her, she let me take her anyway. She made me feel free and so damn cool."

Her eyebrow rose. _Take? _ "How'd you meet her?"

"Got bored one day. Wanted to try something new."

"Anybody Ah know?" She was curious.

"No. Not yet, anyway." His smile was alluring and suspicious—a dangerous and heady mix. "I wanted to introduce you two, actually. Her name's Mary Jane, and if I could just _find _her. . ." he dove through the black duffle he'd brought with him, filled with who-knew-what. "I think you'll love her too."

For a moment, she sat there confused. _How is he gonna find a girl in _there? And then it hit her. _Mary Jane?_ "Does she have a dragon?"

He laughed, holding up a plastic sandwich bag rolled up neatly and lovingly, the herb inside probably the most precious thing most teenagers have ever seen. "Hell yeah—I take it you two have met?"

She couldn't help the smirk. "Ah've seen her before, but Ah can't say Ah've ever tried her."

And even though she knew it was a stupid idea, and even though she _knew_ someone would find out and everyone would probably be on their cases by morning, Marie went ahead helped John get reacquainted with Mary Jane. "We should just smoke all of it—you know as well as I do that when they find out, they'll just toss it or something." And that would be a waste. She noted how he said _when,_ not _if_. They both knew that they'd get caught—it would have been smart to have never done this in the first place. The thought of having to talk John's—and her own—way out of a _serious_ punishment was exhausting in itself. She was an idiot to have gone along with this at all.

But John was a charmer—and she always loved a charmer.

Logan's gruff charm was endearing, whereas Bobby's decency was cute—then exhausting, after a while. Johnny-boy was a rake, if she were to coin a term from an old romance novel she'd read in her younger years, and he was pleasing to the eyes; he offered adventure and danger and all of those things mama had warned her about. He _was_ the guy _all_ mamas told their baby girls about.

_But mama wouldn't really care right now, would she?_ And he let her be dishonest, even though—in romping along during these escapades of theirs—she was being at her most honest. With herself.

So she became the accomplice. Two heads to an ounce was simply . . . well, it was amazing. And would get their asses in a hot mess. But right now, it was amazing, and that was all they wanted to think about. He taught her how to roll, didn't even scrunch her nose in disgust when she realized she'd be inhaling something that he'd had to slobber all over—and just where did those cigars come from? She tried one, too, breaking open the leafy wrapping and gutting Logan's favored brand of tobacco. He'd had to perform surgery on the poor—what was it called? A blunt?—because she just couldn't remember how to do it.

At some point—they were both too "fucked up" to remember how—they ended up completely disregarding their seats and planted their rumps somewhat sloppily on the rooftop's floor instead. Marie found that the ground was infinitely comfortable, peeling off her cloak and sweater to show off the baby-tee hidden beneath. _Not that cold, really_. Her fingers were sweaty—so she took off her gloves. Aw fuck; she took off her boots and socks, too, untying the scarf from around her neck and sliding off the elastic that held back her hair. Lying spread-eagle, she never, _ever_, wanted to move.

Beside her, John wasn't much better; he hadn't touched his lady Jane since before Xavier had brought his sorry ass to the Institute, and had forgotten just how potent she was. He sucked at math, but everything suddenly turned into an algebraic equation in his head, starting with simple addition and subtraction. _One ounce plus two noobs equal disaster. Half ounce plus me equals fucked up_. Okay, so he _still_ sucked at math problems. Meh; the girl mewling on the ground next to him was probably better to concentrate on—but he couldn't seem to stop staring at her breasts. Since he'd never seen them, he wanted to now.

And had she been in her right state of mind, she would have smacked him for groping her. _But that requires too much effort. _Lazily, she just swatted at his hand, rolling over a little and kicking his side lightly with her bare foot. She ended up in this weird, soft-pretzel-twist position that felt really good on her spine, so she stayed that way.

Until he stole the words from her heart, the sound of her feelings given voice almost too much for her to bear: "I'm hungry."

She sat up instantly, her eyes as wide as they could go—which still made her look sleepy. "Ohmigawdmetoo."

"Yeah. Let's get some grub." He sounded tired, too, but somehow she knew he wasn't; she forgot how she knew, but she knew that she knew. She let him grab her by the arm and pull her up, much too languid to try it on her own. "How come you have no socks on?" he asked, his face skewered in one of the most hilariously ridiculous expressions she'd ever witnessed—probably in an attempt to show his confusion. He looked like a deformed cow.

"Ah don't know. Ah guess mah shoes got angry at me." Her lower lip trembled. "Even mah shoes run away from me."

He didn't know how to fix this. Glaring at her leather boot—the other one was missing, the coward—he kicked off his sandals in an effort to console her. She saw this and beamed, grabbing his arm and stumbling around before she found the doors that would lead them back inside the mansion. Unfortunately, she found his arm to be just as huggable as a teddy bear and embraced it with both of her own, enjoying his warm skin against her. He didn't even notice. "I could go for . . . the whole left side of the kitchen." He tripped down a stair, her death grip on his arm not helping his balance any. He laughed, not exactly sure what was so funny.

His laugh made her laugh. "Your feet are too big, sugah."

He had enough sense to take advantage of _that_. "You know what that means."

She hummed a little, closing her eyes and leaning her forehead against his shoulder. "Large shoes."

He almost didn't get it. Then he couldn't stop laughing, even as they tripped down the last few steps when one of her smaller feet forgot to step _down_—not _up_—and set them both off-balance. Once they remembered their hungered bellies, they half-crawled to the kitchen with an intent on eating _everything_; if he hadn't remembered that _she_ wasn't edible, he'd have eaten _her_ at some point.

In front of the refrigerator, they sat back on their haunches as if worshipping the giant. Hungry astonishment made a mockery of their bright, young faces. As one, they grabbed the handle and opened the door, tears of joy overflowing when all of the lovely, wonderful, delicious, beautiful _food_ came into view—oh _God_, this must have been Heaven. Marie grabbed a tray of half-eaten cake—she didn't care who it belonged to—and stuffed the entire confection in her face, chewing with embellishment. She let John take a nibble from the piece she held in her hand and in return, he fed her a handful of chips he'd found somewhere along the way.

They continued in this vain for an insurmountable amount of time. When she felt bloated enough that she couldn't walk, he had to lug her to her feet, his own belly slightly larger than before. "Ah think we ate too much," she muttered sleepily, not bothering to open her eyes. He agreed, she knew, even though she couldn't understand a thing he'd just said. Together they sprawled on top of the island, their feet dangling high above the ground. There was a mess on the floor and the 'fridge's door was still open . . . but they could deal with that later, when she didn't feel so heavy and _loose_, and when his shoulder didn't feel almost as good as a pillow. He was muttering something, she heard, but couldn't make out what; her forehead found his temple, her eyes finding his sweetly-tanned cheek fascinating. He was warm, and it seemed only fitting that the sun would be so attuned as to darken his flesh only two days after the official start of summer. She reached up weakly and poked.

"Mrr?" He turned his head, his forehead thumping against hers softly. There was brief tug-of-war in which they tested the pressure between them, swaying back and forth before they found the right amount that would keep one from pushing the other's brow too far back. He stared at her nose. "You poked me."

She didn't answer. He wondered if he imagined the interruption of his rather intelligent explanation pertaining to trigonometry—and something about psychology, maybe—via poke. Even though he wanted to continue, he'd forgotten what he'd been saying and so didn't bother, resting his head against hers. She was pretty, anyway, so what was the point? He'd much rather watch her than talk about the fundamentals of the human psyche, and his theory on how mutants came into being. His cottonmouth drew his attention from _her_ mouth for a moment; should he get up to get some water? This was quite comfortable. Her rolled up jeans bared her pale, pretty calves which kept bumping into his equally bare legs—summertime, and so, summer shorts—and her pretty pink toenails would keep poking his ankle.

He didn't think about how it should be _impossible_ that they were touching—and _had_ been touching for a long while now—with bare hands; bare feet, bare legs, bare _skin_. He didn't think that he should probably be dead with all of the skin-to-skin contact he'd managed to somehow invoke within Marie's Rogue—but the Rogue wasn't here at all, apparently, so he didn't question it. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? _Whatever the Hell that means._ Personally, he never understood that. What was a gift horse, anyway? Was it the Santa of Horseyville?

. . . Maybe he was thinking too much.

He could get used to this—but, unfortunately, he wasn't allowed. As soon as he felt the pair of eyes _glaring_ at him, he turned his head towards the entrance with something vaguely reminiscent of weariness. Only now, it probably looked more like he'd been sleepwalking since his eyes were closed. Marie's forehead, having lost its perch, slid down his face and anchored onto his jawline.

Something told him he should be running—but that would require getting up, and he didn't want to do _that_ at all . . . the owner of the secret glare, however, became not so secret when a voice—and growl—accompanied the presence, and both he and Marie jolted a little.

"What the _fuck_?"

_Shit._

END//monkey.001

**NOTE:** . . . Yeah. If you don't know the euphemism I'm trying to create here in relation to the most wonderful woman in the world—Mary Jane—then I'm not going to bother with an explanation. By their completely _stupid_ behavior, it should be more than obvious.

By the way? I think maybe my spellchecker has been visiting her pet, Puff the Magic Dragon, because in typing the contraction "I'm", it suggested I change it to "I is". What the fuck? When the fuck did my computer learn Ebonics? Should I be afraid? Or perhaps I should worry more about the fact that it didn't ask me to correct the term "Ebonics", which is not yet an official word in the English language.

I don't have a beta. This is a good thing, since the ones I have for _Pirates of the Caribbean_ and _Threads of Fate_ are going to kill me now that I've started yet another fanfiction _when I'm supposed to finish the others_. And it's four in the morning, which means I have work nine-and-a-half hours, which means I will NEVER get enough sleep. Fuck. DAMN YOU X-MEN! Or should I say "DAMN YOU PRYO", because I used to be such a devout Logan/Marie or Scott/Marie 'shipper?

A few references, for the narcotically-ignorant.

**ROLL**: Rolling a blunt, in this case. You have to cut open the cigar—using a razor, unless you're skilled enough to do so with your nails—and then gut it (taking out all of the tobacco). Place the contents of your . . . um . . . _stuff_ into the empty, cut-open cigar and roll it in an imitation of your average cigar. Usually, people have to use their saliva in order to keep the blunt from falling apart.

**BEING HUNGRY:** You gain so much weight being a pothead.

**COTTONMOUTH: **That dry, sticky feeling in your mouth. Everyone gets it, even non-potheads. You just get it more after you smoke.

**TWO HEADS TO AN OUNCE: **Means two people are going to split one ounce of M.J. (no, not Michael Jackson, which is really funny to me for some reason).

That's it for now. I'm tired. Little Xaviers are suddenly smacking me with the little green lighter I lost yesterday.


End file.
